Nakajima Michiko and the 15-Woman Lawsuit Opposing Dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Forces to Iraq
Volume 5 | Issue 10 | Article ID 2551 | Oct 01, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Gendered Labor Justice and the Law of Peace: Nakajima Michiko and the 15-Woman Lawsuit Opposing Dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Forces to Iraq Tomomi Yamaguchi, Norma Field Gendered Labor Justice and the Law of Peace: Nakajima Michiko and the 15- Woman Lawsuit Opposing Dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Forces to Iraq Tomomi YAMAGUCHI and Norma Field Introduction In 2004, then Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi, in response to a request from the United States, sent a contingent of 600 Self- Defense Force troops to Samawa, Iraq, for the Nakajima Michiko from the 2002 calendar, purpose of humanitarian relief and To My Sisters, a photo of her from her reconstruction. Given that Article 9 of the student days at the Japanese Legal Training Japanese Constitution eschews the use of and Research Institute. A larger view of the military force in the resolution of conflict, this same page can be viewed here. was an enormously controversial step, going further than previous SDF engagements as part Nakajima Michiko, a feminist labor lawyer, led of UN peacekeeping operations, whichone such group of plaintiffs, women ranging in themselves had been criticized by opposition age from 35 to 80. Each of the fifteen had her forces as an intensification of the incremental moment in court, stating her reasons, based on watering-down of the "no-war clause" from as her life experiences, for joining the suit. This early as the 1950s. gave particular substance to the claim that Article 9 guarantees the "right to live in Many citizens, disappointed by the weakness of peace"—the centerpiece of many of these parliamentary opposition since a partiallawsuits, a claim that seems to have been first winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system was made when Japan merely contributed 13 billion introduced in 1994, and frustrated by a dollars for the Gulf War effort.
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